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Has the climate in Jaffna changed?

How Jaffna's climate has changed

About 0.0°F per decade, measured from Jaffna's official daily weather records, 1973–2023. Individual years still bounce around — some recent ones came in cool — but the long-term line has clearly risen.

Is that a lot? Jaffna's warming is broadly in line with other cities in Sri Lanka — neither unusually fast nor unusually slow.

What has actually changed

Each card compares the 1970s (the first ten years of the record) with recent years (the last ten) — the same span the headline and the chart use.

Freezing nights
about the same
1970s
0 / yr
Recent
0 / yr
Winters about as cold as before
Average temperature
about the same
1970s
82.6°F
Recent
82.7°F
Year-round temperature has barely moved
Hot days above 90°F
31 more days
1970s
151 / yr
Recent
182 / yr
More days of serious heat
Rainy days
93 more days
1970s
1 / yr
Recent
94 / yr
Wetter on average

Jaffna's temperature, year by year

Average temperature for each year from 1973 to 2023.

80°82°84°1973: 82.9°F1974: 82.2°F1975: 81.9°F1976: 82.7°F1978: 82.4°F1979: 83.0°F1980: 83.5°F1981: 82.6°F1982: 82.9°F1993: 82.2°F2010: 82.6°F2011: 82.0°F2012: 82.8°F2013: 82.4°F2014: 82.7°F2015: 82.8°F2016: 83.3°F2017: 82.7°F2018: 82.4°F2019: 83.1°F2020: 83.1°F2021: 82.5°F2022: 81.8°F2023: 82.9°Flong-term trend19731980201020202023
a warmer-than-average year a cooler-than-average year

Each bar is one year. Most recent years sit above the older ones. Some recent years still came in cool — warming is a slope, not a straight climb.

In day-to-day terms, that long-term shift shows up as about 32 more days above 90°F compared with the 1970s.

When in the year the change shows up

How much warmer each month is now than in the 1970s. Useful if you garden or care about a particular season — otherwise the headline above already has the answer.

0.0°+0.5°+1.0°+1.5°+2.0°+2.5°+3.0°+3.5°+4.0°January: +3.3°F+3.3JFebruary: +3.1°F+3.1FMarch: +2.9°F+2.9MApril: +3.2°F+3.2AMay: +2.9°F+2.9MJune: +2.9°F+2.9JJuly: +3.2°F+3.2JAugust: +2.6°F+2.6ASeptember: +4.0°F+4.0SOctober: +3.8°F+3.8ONovember: +3.8°F+3.8NDecember: +3.4°F+3.4D

September has warmed the most — about 4.0°F. The warming runs across the whole year, not just one season.

Methodology & sources

Temperature — modelled for this location from ERA5-Land reanalysis, a ~9 km global grid, because no long-record weather station is close enough to use.

How we build these numbers →